Here, Toastrack, you wretch. I know you’re there. You’re as far away from me as I can get you, but there you are, still my shadow, though you’re all those yards away. I see your wretched form over where I sent you as far from me as possible.
I don’t care that Rippit’s all out after us, I don’t care even that Duvit and Stunly have been killed, they never were ones to take their position seriously. They never did wear their blood quite right. But I do. I shall save my family, bring them back from the brink. I shall be the hero of all Iremongers. Grandfather’s growing old and ill, true enough, and in his dotage he makes mistakes. He never loved me as much as he should. And now he never looks at me, or calls for me, as once he did. And it’s on account of you, you Toastrack over there. Why must you be a person and not a toastrack, that is my question! Why me after all, why do I have this burden? And Grandfather, he is seen looking about Clod and wondering over all his progress. That whelp should have been put down at birth.
I know he escaped, Clod the wretch, I do know it! I caught one of the leathers we’d set to keep him in the house, name of John Demijohn. He said that Clod had frightened them and they’d gone running! To be frightened of Clod! I unstitched the leather then and there, and he fell out into the street. Just as I shall, no doubt, if Rippit catches up to me. I mean to do it still, I mean to kill Clod. To do it myself.
Clod! He cares nothing for Iremongers! (Perhaps I said that rather loudly, I’ll return now to my seething and whispering.)
He does not deserve us. (That’s better.)
He sullies us with his simpering after such common Foulsham skirts! Whoever could care for such cheap flesh is beyond me.
And so I, I shall show them who it is that he is and in so doing let them see who it is that I am. He shall not mock me again, I do swear it! So then here it is, I hold it in my own hands, my great Beaumont-Adams, what a pistol you are. And you’ll do it for me, yes you shall. I had another one of you, your lovely twin, but where it is gone now I cannot say, I have lost it in all the struggle, I must have dropped it when Toastrack and I ran so fast from Rippit and his flaming, and sought some sanctuary here under the dome of Saint Paul’s. Whatever may have befallen it, it’s not here now. But still I have you, and you, dear pistol, you shall do the job, shan’t you? I like the feel of you, I do like to talk to you. You’re a comfort. With this here gun, with this bullet loaded into the cradle I shall kill Clod Iremonger. I kiss the barrel, I kiss my medal, there I swear it. It is my duty.
I shall so earn my trousers doing such a deed!
Hang on, where’s Toastrack gone? Is he there in the shadows?
Toastrack?
Toastrack! Wherever could he have got to?†